Chapter 31

"End of the line."

Mikeos reached for his gun, thinking the words a threat, then let his hand fall. He raised his head, pushing up the brim of his hat. For too long the sleepers passing beneath his feet had been all he saw, beating out time to his death march. He kept telling himself 'look up'. Jim Bright could have picked him off any time, picked them all off, from any ridge. All he'd need to do was wait, and Mikeos Jones, the great gunslinger of Ansos, would shamble into view, blind to the world, and get shot.

"End of the line." It could have been Bright's judgement on him, but instead it was Hemar's dry bark.

Mikeos tried to blink the blur from his sight. In the distance a ridge rose up blocking the tracks' passage, and against the dusty ochre of the slope some black projection . . . the last water-tower! Mikeos's parched tongue twitched at the thought of the coolness in that raised tank. Hemar had already started to run. The sun had almost fallen behind the rise, throwing a long shadow that advanced along the tracks almost at walking pace.

"No!" Raising even a half shout tore something in his chest but it was enough to stop the dogman. "Jim Bright ain't killed us yet. Where else can he be but watching that tower? Letting it sucker us in so he can shoot us off the ladder? Nothing else makes sense."

Hemar slouched back, reluctant. "Can you see him, Jenna? Hex him out?"

Mikeos turned to see Jenna coming up to join them. The Dry had wrung her out, painted her grey with dust, scored every line deeper and cut the flesh from her bones, leaving harsh angles. She looked spent. She hadn't hexed them up any water. She hadn't hexed the poison out of his wound. And he wasn't entirely convinced the outrider at Small Stones hadn't just happened to fall off his horse by chance. The likelihood of her hexing Jim Bright out of hiding for them seemed ... slim.

Jenna held her hands before her eyes, long fingers interlaced in a web to view the world through. The witches looked at the world like that, like the spider in her web, connected by threads to the real lives of men and women, the dirty, complex, loud, and dangerous lives of the people they purported to serve and guide, all reduced to little tugs on the threads of their grand web.

"Nothing," she said.

"Nothing as in 'nothing is there', or nothing as in 'I got nothing'?" Mikeos regretted the words as they left him, despite the answer being life and death to them. He regretted doubting her, as if doubting her skill might collapse it entirely.

"I can't see his aura," Jenna said, without offense.

Mikeos drew his gun. "You go in, Hemar. I'll watch the left, Jenna the right."

"Couldn't we circle round, come over the hills?" Jenna asked.

"You might be able to. I'm done." Mikeos pointed ahead with his gun. "Straight ahead's all I've got left in me. Besides, would you circle round to the left, or the right?"

Hemar shrugged. "Jenna says he ain't here." And he walked on, nose high. "And there's nothing of him on the wind. But watch to the left anyhows. If he expected a domen he'll be hiding up there where his scent's less like to carry from."

Mikeos bit the inside of his cheek, letting the pain sharpen him up. He held his revolver two handed, the weapon trembling in the grip of his fever, aim point dancing along the ridges to the left. Hemar moved up the remaining track at the trot, either not caring whether he caught a bullet, or perhaps showing a faith in Jenna's judgment that shamed Mikeos's own.

"Trust'll get you shot quicker than looking for a fight," Mikeos muttered. Had his pa used to say that, or did he learn it off some free-fighter. He couldn't keep his memories lined up any better than his aim.

Hemar reached the water-tower and went up the ladder, without pausing to look for Bright. The scent of water probably had him hooked by the nose, reeling him in. The dogman swung out beneath the long water-arm and opened the faucet. Seeing him drenched, and dripping, gasping as the water flowed, almost set Mikeos staggering forward. He felt Jenna restraining herself without needing to look her way.

"You next," he said. "And keep looking." Hex or no, she had eyes.

Jenna went forward, faster than before, nervous where Hemar was sure, watching the high ground to either side and the slopes where the bramble twined black and deadly. Mikeos's eyes kept straying to her back, his fever-driven imagination drawing a bullet through her on a crimson thread, her skull exploding in its wake, half her face gone in a splatter of gore. The thought of it hollowed him. What had Hemar said? The girl had a young man who was sweet on her? Jenna was far from being a girl, and he was older than his pa had been when Jim Bright faced him down. But perhaps he was sweet on her.

Mikeos shook his head, snapped his gaze back to the ridge. For a moment he saw motion, his hands steadying, finger closing on the trigger. But no, just a crow stalking among the thorns. He looked back. Jenna had reached the tower and was handing her canteen up to Hemar.

Thirst wouldn't let him wait any longer. Bright's aim point seemed to wander over Mikeos, scoring a hot line across his flesh, but the water drew him. In his mind's eye he saw Bright bedded down in the tangled thorn, rifle ready, eye to the sights. But the water-tower held his gaze and released it only briefly to flicker along the slopes.

Mikeos reached the tower unharmed and took the canteen Jenna held out for him. The water slid down his throat, sweeter than life or love. Men might seem complex things but strip enough away from them and their needs can be met with simple things. He held the canteen to his mouth, letting the water fill his cheeks, taking just small swallows to allow his stomach time to adjust. He watched the ridges now, staring at them over the leather sides of the canteen. Jenna and Hemar looked wary too, woken to the danger now their thirst had been quenched.

"Where is he?" Hemar asked.

"Only one place I can think of." And Mikeos pointed up past the end of the line to the black ridge and the pale sky beyond. Sunset threatened.

They walked until the track gave out. Only here and in Sweet Water, where the First Track ran, did the track ever end, as far as men knew. If the taur or dogmen or hunska knew of other terminuses these were secrets they held close. At the end where the rails stopped the three of them stopped too. It seemed a place of significance. They faced each other, exchanging glances.

"You ready for this?" Mikeos asked, trying to keep the fever-shake from his voice.

"No." Hemar let his jaw hang open in the dogman grin, all teeth and slobber.

"I—" Jenna began as if even now she would admit no doubt or weakness, then meeting his gaze her face softened. "No."

"Me either. Let's go." And he led them up the slope.

The short climb came as a shock after so many days of level gradients, the tracks cutting through every hill, riding over each valley on embankments. Mikeos' legs threatened rebellion and his breath ran short half way up as if his lungs were too full to take the air.

All the slope's eastern side lay in shadow though the sky still held the light and the on rocky descent beyond the ridge the sun would still be shining.

The black and broken rock shifted beneath Mikeos's feet and he fell among the boulders with an oath, the impact converting his shoulder to a solid mass of pain and knocking what little breath remained to him from his lungs. On levering himself to all fours and brushing the grit from his bleeding palms Mikeos saw that Hemar and Jenna had reached the ridge ahead of him. They stood without motion, their feet in shadow, faces in the sun, transfixed.

Still on all fours, and cursing each time he moved his injured shoulder, Mikeos clambered the last five yards and looked to see for himself what awaited them. Exhausted and running with sweat he finally broken into the sunshine – and the light filled him.

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